Small Area Labour Market data supports improving jobs story in Q1 for Far North

After yesterday’s disappointing regional data for May (see here) it is encouraging to see the quarterly Dept of Employment Small Area Labour Market (SALM) data for the first quarter of this year confirm the generally positive trend that we have been witnessing earlier this year. The SALM estimates are created …read more

Cairns employment growth slows; unemployment rate up on back of female jobless

The Trend of improving employment data for the Cairns region that we have been discussing this year appears to have come to a halt. Today’s release from the ABS of unadjusted labour market data for May has the headline unemployment rate in Cairns jumping to 9.8% (from 6.8% in April) …read more

Local Building Approvals slow

Regional ABS data for April shows building approvals in the Cassowary Coast slowed sharply, despite positive comments from the Council about first quarter data in the local press just last week (see our previous commentary on what appeared strong data). Unadjusted approvals in April were just 2 (after 11 in …read more

Herron Todd White agrees; Cairns Trend employment improving

The latest Cairns Watch from Herron Todd White (available here), confirms our own Conus Trend analysis of the Cairns labour market. Back on May 14th we posted that the Trend unemployment rate in the Cairns region had improved to 7.2%, unchanged from a downwardly revised April number. You can read our …read more

Cairns unemployment rate hits 43 month low of 7.2%

The ABS regional labour market data released this morning confirms the ongoing improvement in the jobs market in Cairns (see here for last month’s post). As always the raw unadjusted data needs to be set aside in favour of our Conus Trend series to get a true picture of what …read more

Building approvals continue to climb in the Far North

The ABS data for regional housing approvals in March released this morning show the positive trend in the Far North continuing, despite the headline data for Cairns weakening slightly from Feb. The unadjusted data from the ABS is notoriously volatile so we need to consider the Conus Trend series to …read more

A look at the gender split in Cairns’ jobs market

A piece last week on the Cairns Now website, referring to our own analysis of the March Regional Labour Force data, made note of the variation in the data for males and females in Cairns. The Cairns Now journo was relying on the unadjusted ABS data as there has been …read more

Regional jobs data shows Cairns improving

The ABS today released their unadjusted March regional labour force data. The headline data for Cairns showed the unemployment rate stable at 7.9%, while Townsville saw unemployment jump to 9.2% (from 7.7% last month). However, as always, these unadjusted numbers need to be considered at the Conus Trend level to …read more

Cairns Port dredge EIS finally sees the light of day…and it kills the project

The previous LNP government withheld the release of the Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed dredging of Trinity Inlet until after the QLD state elections. Finally we get to see the report (available for download here) and it is clear that the recent Federal moves to ban the dumping of …read more

Strong regional building approvals in FNQ again

Last week’s building approvals data for Feb saw a big correction from the stellar Jan figures (see here) so we might have expected things to have eased slightly in the Far North too; in fact that has not been the case. The raw, unadjusted ABS data shows Cairns (incl Douglas) had 71 …read more

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